By Tom Petersen, Director of Technical Marketing: PhysX does not compete with OpenCL or DX11’s DirectCompute.

PhysX is an API and runtime that allows games and game engines to model the physics in a game. Think of PhysX as a layer above OpenCL or DirectCompute, which in contrast are very generic and low level interfaces that enable GPU-accelerated computation. Game developers don’t create content in OpenCL or DirectCompute. Instead they author in toolsets (some of which are provided by NVIDIA) that allow them to be creative quickly. Once they have good content they “compile” a specific platform (PC, Wii, Xbox, PS3, etc) using another tool flow.

During this process game studios have three basic concerns:

1. Does PhysX make it easier to develop games for all platforms – including consoles?

2. Does PhysX make it easier to have kick ass effects in my game?

3. Will NVIDIA support my efforts to integrate this technology?

And the answer to the three questions above is: yes, yes, and yes. We are spending our time and money pursuing those goals to support developers, and right now the developer community is not telling us that OpenCL or DirectCompute support are required.

At the end of the day, the success of PhysX as a technology will depend on how easy it is for game designers to use and how incredible the game effects are that they create. Batman: Arkham Asylum is a good example of the type of effects we can achieve with PhysX running on NVIDIA GPUs, and we are working to make the next round of games even more compelling. At this time, NVIDIA has no plan to move from CUDA to either OpenCL or DirectCompute as the implementation engine for GPU acceleration. Instead we are working to support developers and implement killer effects.

#2 – Will PhysX become open-source?

Tom Petersen: NVIDIA is investing a lot of time and effort in PhysX and we do not plan to make it open source today. Of course the binaries for the SDK are distributed for free, and source code is available for licensing if game designers need it.

Browsing through the web recently, I’ve found that The Unofficial PhysX Links & Info Page, oldest info website about PhysX technology (since 2005), was finally closed after several months of inactivity. Title page says:

This page will not be updated anymore.

For all things PhysX, go to physxinfo.com.

Back in early 2007 this website inspired me to start my own PhysX project, that evolved afterwards to PhysXInfo.com

Unreal Development Kit (UDK), a free version of the Unreal® Engine 3, the software development framework used to create computer and video games, 3D simulations, etc, was unnounced today. UDK is free for noncommercial and educational use, and is already available for download.

Not to mention, UDK’s physics system, like in Unreal Engine 3, is based on PhysX SDK.

Nvidia start to propagate invitation to Launch Party event, that will be hold at Nvidia campus in Santa Clara on October 30. New graphics card is going to be launched (no, not Fermi), with curious promise to “take PhysX to the next level”.

Insufficient details leaves some space for speculations, but we think that new GeForce GT240, another GPU in Nvidia’s 40nm line, will be revealed. Probably – new GPU PhysX title is going to be announced too.

Update: some sources indicates that it will be dual card with GT200b (graphics) + G92 (PhysX) GPUs, like GTX275 and GTS250 combined on one PCB.

Expreviewasked its readers recently, about which physics acceleration technology looks more promising to them.

Now, after 5 days and 281 votes, Nvidia PhysX is leading, Bullet is going second (probably, thanks to AMD users and all recent hype, as Bullet was listed as “AMD Bullet”, while being independent development), Intel Havok comes third.

The goal was to try and construct a wall similar to how it may be constructed on a movie set and break it apart in a realistic manor in real-time. In this scenario we chose to throw ragdolls at it to fracture and splinter bits and pieces off.

During opening Keynote with Jen-Hsun Huang at GPU Technology Conference, several PhysX applications were used to demonstrate computing capabilities of new Fermi architecture. We are now able provide a little more details.

SPH-fluid simulation with Navier-Stokes solvers demo was built using 128 000 particles to create realistic realtime water behavior.

Update:

PhysX Wall Destruction demo is using APEX Destruction Module to simulate wall being destroyed by the impact of flying ragdolls. Over 10 000 rigid bodies represents debris and wall chunks – all being processed and fully self-shadowed by the GPU.